Meaningful Prayer

George Buttrick writes a wonderfully vivid guideline to prayer life. I believe that I have a good balance between a formal and formless prayer life, but I feel like I leave some things out. When I first started having a prayer life I followed the CHAT acronym which taught me the basics on praying along the lines of confessing, honoring, asking, and thanking. Now when I pray I seem to have a decent order to things, but I’ve never thought about the self-preparation stage or the resolve we should have after confessing. Also I feel as if I hit all the high points when I pray but mostly out of practice, not really understanding specifically what each step meant or why I do them. A strategy that I’m going to try and adopt to improve my prayer life is, in all honesty, I think I’m going to make a chart like Buttrick mentions to make sure I get everything in and don’t forget anything or anyone; using it as a guideline without making it too formal.  I’m also going to continue to study the meaning behind each stage.